


soldier sense

by seraf



Series: war, illuminated [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clone Wars, Coruscant, Force Sensitivity, Force-Sensitive Clones, Multi, Order 66, Original Character(s), Original Clone Characters, Post-Episode: s04e07 Darkness on Umbara, cody isn't paid enough for this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 06:51:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16969791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: clones you may be, but in the force, very different, all of you are.a compilation of short stories about force-sensitive clones.





	1. Chapter 1

it’s a well-known “fact” ( in the quotation marks, it’s insisted, because there’s no way to get substantiative proof over things like personalities and a series of coincidences ) that commanding officers in the gar take after their generals. 

there are jokes made about it - the reckless way rex has taken to fighting and the way his voice has grown louder, brasher, cody’s wry smile and the hints of an accent tinging his voice, gree becoming more quiet and contemplative. bly picking up general aayla’s calm walk and the same look of distant trouble in her eyes. the way thire sometimes spoke in riddles, or smiled like he knew something you didn’t. 

but general yoda watches them, and frowns, slightly, only to himself, as he notices something they don’t seem to, in the way they’ve started to completely resonate, master and commander. 

obi-wan gets blasted in the shoulder, and immediately cody is there, knowing his weak spot almost as well as if he’d been the one shot, picking up the general’s lightsaber where he dropped it and slipping into - it’s more militant, certainly, cody’s body mass-produced and sturdy where obi-wan is almost  _lithe,_ but it looks damn well like the soresu. for a moment, until the shooting stops, cody acts almost like an extension of obi-wan’s body, his will, and neither of them questions it, obi-wan simply letting out a quip as he leans heavy on cody, taking back his lightsaber with a mild thanks. 

ponds is surrounded, with only his pistols and the hope that his general heard his call for back-up. but he  _fights,_ anyway, shooting until both of his guns run out of ammo. it’s what he does afterwards that almost freezes general windu in his path for a moment. ponds, spinning, kicking, punching his way through the droids, limbs a blur of umber-and-white armor and calmer than mace has ever felt him. his heel slams into the weak joint of a droid’s waist, he ducks into another’s blind spot, and cracks yet another’s neck off of its body where a wire is fraying. 

 _shatterpoints,_ general windu thinks to himself, after joining his commander in the fight and purposefully noting some of said points in their enemy, while holding his blade to another and watching ponds’ leg slam into that very spot. it must be coincidence, or good training and instinct. 

right? 

krell stares ct-7567 in the eyes, mouth pulling back into a growl, and the air tastes of electricity, like putting your tongue to a live wire. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> force-sensitive cody, specifically.

‘ ––– sometimes, cody, i wonder if you’d make a good jedi yourself. ‘

it’s said as a joke, obi-wan clipping his lightsaber to his belt after ( in what was increasingly becoming a pattern ) cody had handed it back to him. given the sheer amount of time cody spent by his side, and the amount of time he spent with his weapon, obi-wan had begun giving him lessons in their few and far between moments of spare time on form III, the same one he used. 

( privately, cody preferred his blaster, uncivilized or no. )

in and of itself, the whole thing had become an ongoing joke in the 212th - every time one of them saw him working with the general, boil especially, they would bow and greet him with a grave ‘master cody.’ 

( cody knows obi-wan thinks he doesn’t see him trying to hide a laugh in the sleeve of his cloak, at that. )

the truth of the matter sounds crazy, even to himself, and he’s filed it quietly under ‘ _jedi’,_ with the mental equivalent of a roll of his eyes. 

he thinks obi-wan’s lightsaber likes him. 

well. maybe that’s the wrong word for it. 

more - an alliance. in the same way that he and rex would share a long-suffering look every time anakin did just about  _anything,_ he got a sense of  _exasperation_ from the weapon once, when he was holding it, watching obi-wan … “negotiate” with a nonplussed separatist leader, and he had snorted. 

there had been almost a note of surprise he felt, that hadn’t belonged to him. from then on, he always just seemed to instinctively  _know_ where obi-wan’s weapon was, even when that information escaped obi-wan himself. 

‘ i don’t think so, sir. besides. you seem to have that job managed well yourself. ‘


	3. Chapter 3

they call it  _soldier sense,_ and it’s easy enough to rationalize; sharpened senses in the clones who have been on the front long enough to get used to it - good intuition and pattern recognition, and that’s  _all._ ( rex learns to  _trust it,_ though: when cody says he has a bad feeling about something, he’s  _always_ been right, and fives can dodge shots from behind without knowing there’s an enemy there. ) 

 _found him trying to eat his own blaster,_ coric tells general kenobi, putting away the empty hypodermic he had used to deliver the sedative.  _i got there just in time._

obi-wan strokes his beard in that contemplative way he has.  _how did you know he was there?_ coric’s back stiffens for only a fraction of a second. 

 _i had a hunch._ he looks obi-wan in the eyes, expression clear that he wants that to be the end of it.  _that’s all._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> commander fox is force-sensitive, but not quite enough.

commander fox, of the coruscant guard, loves his job. 

(  _commander fox, of the coruscant guard, hates his job._  )

he loves it (  _hates it_  )   
for the people, seeing the trillions of coruscantians flowing in and out of buildings like running water, with small children who so often come up to them with wide eyes and questions about the job   
(  _for the people, who come up with questions he can’t answer, or ask after brothers he can’t give them._  )

(  _he hates it_  ) loves it   
(  _for the politics, for the senators he has to be guard to, watching them go to their fourth banquet of the week while their people starve and while they argue, impassioned, in the senate, to cut rations for the troops to two meals a day_  )   
for the politics. for the senators like bail organa, who has quietly been working across the various republic systems to get clones recognized, legally, as people. 

he loves (  _hates_  )   
his boss. chancellor palpatine is a good and honest man, and he knows fox’s name and thanks him for his service regularly, even giving the coruscant guard a salary, which, although small, is more than any of their vode get.   
(  _his boss. he feels, always, like he’s a specimen under glass around him. there’s something cold in the chancellor’s eyes, even as he offers a kind smile, and it makes fox’s skin crawl more than anything he’s ever seen or felt before._ )

(  _he hates_ ) loves  
(  _the brothers of the guard. to this day, he doesn’t know why any of them were chosen, just that the chancellor looks at each of them like he could swallow them whole. just that rax always knows when someone is lying, and that every time tamn gets sick, a brother of their guard will die that day._ )  
the brothers of the guard, in their red armor - they’re all loyal and good men, hand-picked for this position. he’s glad to have them by his side, and he wouldn’t choose any others. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the coruscant guard, tamn, and the spectre of death.

and then there’s tamn, of the coruscant guard - hand-picked by the chancellor, just as the rest of the guard are, though no one is quite sure how palpatine chooses, or what he’s looking for in them. 

( he’s looking for  _interesting_ pawns, and finds them, in the way that the force winds around rax and tamn, in the way that, in the future he has seen, fox is there, a bright red incidental barricade to a path of action that might have stopped him, the way adder looks at him and for a moment seems to  _know._ )

its not like they’ve got potential or anything, but they’re an interesting side effect of the game he’s playing. so for now he pulls them close, to keep them under glass and just to  _watch._  

tamn is force sensitive, not that he knows it, or that he’d call it that. 

he’s hypersensitive to death specifically, especially among his vode - it’s become a bad omen, bc every time he gets sick, the guard  _knows_  one of them is going to end up not seeing the next sunrise

on the day order 66 is going to be carried out the cg goes to wake tamn and he’s just fucking  _burning_  to the touch, and muttering incoherently - about betrayal, and game pieces, and sudden silence covering the city, and no one really knows what to do with that, so they leave tamn to his bed and carry on, albeit grimly, knowing that at least one of them is going to die

the next twelve hours roll by and fox has a sudden, bone-deep moment where realization hits him like a blaster bolt to the chest. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a reckoning.

‘ you know what’s going to happen. ‘

it’s more of an amused observation than anything else, as palpatine watched tamn, in only his blacks, stand looking at the jedi temple from the balcony.

tamn nodded. 

‘ i know that many of my brothers will not make it through the night. and … somehow, i can feel the same for the jedi. but it won’t be an attack, will it, my lord? ‘

palpatine cannot hide a pleased smile, coming up to rest a hand on tamn’s shoulder as he did months ago when he pulled him away from the fate of decommission, sensing the warps of the force around him. an amusing pawn, and one to keep nearby. 

tamn’s grey eyes stay focused on the horizon. 

‘ it’s not hard to see what might happen. ‘ he turns to the chancellor, face still calm. ‘ this has been a long time coming, hasn’t it? ‘

‘ you’ve always been a remarkably perceptive soldier. ‘

tamn doesn’t seem to acknowledge it, eyes drifting back to the direction of the jedi temple on the horizon, before his face, the same sharp frames as millions of his brothers, sets. 

‘ i’m not going to make it past this conversation, am i. ‘

‘ don’t worry, my dear. your body will just be one of hundreds of troopers killed by lightsaber. ‘

he’s nodding, not even flinching at that, and palpatine’s lip curls up for a moment. brave soldiers, every one of the men he had created. a good and honorable army. and the fact that he had the power to take that away was almost enthralling. 

tamn doesn’t even turn when he hears the weapon ignite.


	7. Chapter 7

there’s a force sensitive cadet in like - one of the earliest batches, like the alphas or command class or something. ( maybe it’s cody! maybe it’s a baby cody or ponds! ) and when i say cadet, i mean they’re like - 2, equiv 4, or so. 

jango Hates the jedi. but he’s not stupid enough to not guess what decommission means, or why it’s being applied contemplatively as a solution to this four-year-old who’s just a little bit different in the wrong sort of way - and a part of him is also just curious. 

dooku has his schemes, but jango hates him as well. ( he’s a practical man, and his hatred is much the same. he doesn’t  _hide_ it from dooku. they both remember galidraan. but he acts as if he’s moved past it. there is always the future for revenge. )

so a three-or-four year old equivalent age baby clone gets, like so many do, dropped off at the door to the jedi temple.

( there’s a bit of a murmur caused by it, if only for the fact that the man who brought the child was in full mando armor. the two groups have some history, to say the least, and the man is gone as soon as he came. )

and this is - eight years or so before the clone army will be discovered. so there’s just a young mando boy, brought into the creche and treated like all the other children, because they have no reason, really, to suspect he’s anything  _but._ ( later, while doing check-ups on him, they discover that his growth is accelerated, but it’s just assumed he’s some-part nonhuman or something. )

they grow up in the jedi temple, and would in all likelihood be a padawan when everything is set into motion. 

and then the clone army is discovered, and some old part of him  _remembers,_ remembers kamino and remembers thousands of brothers and remembers jango, even. he goes with yoda, when it comes time to pick his brothers up. 

the question of  _are these men people_ no longer exists, because it is asked, once, briefly, and the - he’s not a cadet any more, if he had stayed, he would be one of  _them,_ the soldiers in armor on the field - levels burning gold eyes at the asker. 

 _they are my brothers,_ he says, and that is the end of it. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the war ends in a better way.

nova is three years old when the clone wars grind to a halt, without ceremony for him; they aren’t told about it on kamino for another month, when the jedi come in and force the long-necks out, and the tired cadets cheer, stomping the needles and electrosphere droids into plastisteel dust, littering the no-longer sterile white hallways. 

( it takes some time for the republic to decide what do to with them. )

nova is woken by the rain. at least, he thinks it’s by the rain, it has to be. but there’s something else telling him something, like one of the trainers taking his arms and gently guiding him through the motions, so he rubs his eyes and climbs out of his sleeping tube and follows it. 

kamino is full of jedi now. 

and despite their sad eyes and their words that say that they’re here to help, plenty of the vod’e still don’t  _trust_ them, especially not when they get their hands on holopads, announcement reels, and  _read_ the word slavery and associate it with themselves. 

nova isn’t old enough to know what their lives  _should_ be. it’s all well and good for a republic he’s never seen to suddenly declare them people, but nova is three years old and has spent those three years on kamino and is still on kamino now. 

which is why he gives the jedi a wide berth, bare feet padding softly down the halls as he follows the strange pull. 

* * *

if his breathing apparatus allowed for it, high general plo koon thinks he would be shouting in frustration right now. semantics and politics, and there were still thousands of children wandering the halls of kamino in straight lines, because when they learned how to walk, they learned how to walk in file. was the republic really so vehement to erase their mistakes that they would leave kamino in isolation?

( there’s a grim answer deep in his chest, and he resolves to  _change it._ )  

for the past two hours now, he’s felt dark golden eyes watching him curiously. 

not something  _uncommon_ on kamino, given that you’d find the same eyes in jango fett’s face, but these were boring into the back of his head, and he waits until he’s alone in one of the old genetic chambers to rumble out ‘i know you’re there. do not be afraid.’

slowly, from behind one of the pillars, walks a child about knee-tall to plo, and there’s a feeling of deja vu overcoming him as he gently sinks to a knee and reaches out a hand, to be on the child’s level. ( though the boy in front of him now is equivalent to much older than little ‘soka had been. old enough that there’s a spark of distrust, wariness, in his eyes even as he reaches out to take plo’s hand. )

‘ what is your name? ‘

‘ clone cadet 5621, sir. ‘

plo just looks steadily at him until the cadet’s gaze drops, shaggy black hair falling in his face, and the faint sense of  _purpose_ that had been with him melting away. 

‘ nova, sir. ‘ he’s looking up at plo with eyes that, before all this, the kel dor would have called oxymoronic - there’s a definitive look to a child’s eyes, raw and curious and innocent, and there’s a cast all soldiers have to theirs, and the two things  _shouldn’t_ go together, but he has not seen a clone, even at this age, for which it does not. nova is frowning slightly. ‘ i’m meant to tell you something, i think. but i don’t know what. ‘

plo  _looks._ not through his goggles, but he closes his eyes and focuses. all clones have vastly different force signatures. nova’s is bright, and fiercely so, and for a moment, plo almost wonders if that’s how he got his name.  _no, the kaminoans said that they eliminated force sensitivity from their creations as a possibility. right?_

but there is a golden thread of energy linking  _him_ to the clone cadet, ghostly and hanging from nova’s small-bright presence, and when plo opens his eyes, he sees nova’s eyes focused in the same place, where the line ran through the force. 

 _so they were wrong about just one more thing._  


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brief speculation on force-sensitive dogma.

he’s sitting on his hands again. 

it’s what alpha-seventeen told him to do, grabbing his wrist and lowering his hands easily, before kneeling before him and telling him that that  _wasn’t allowed,_ that it wasn’t what a soldier or a manda or a clone did, and that he had to get better at controlling himself. and ct-5381 is a good soldier, he tells himself, even though he’s only about two right now, so he works to stop himself. 

so he sits on his hands, and swings his legs, and shoves down the energy he feels, even though it  _itches,_ to keep the world silent like this. 

‘ you can’t talk to people like that. ‘

he doesn’t know why. sometimes, when he tries to speak, the words swell up in his throat, and he can’t get them out, or they just can’t form like that at all. so he used his other-voice to say something to riff, another cadet, and riff had turned pale, dragging over one of the cuy’val dar. 

he forces words out, and slowly forgets how to use the other-voice, or that he had it at all. 

he remembers. 

he’s sitting in a cell in umbara, and he  _remembers,_ because there’s a stopper in his chest and he can’t push the words out, and everything else comes back with that. 

he remembers. 

and as the security lock on fives’ holster slides open without him touching it, he remembers this, too. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cody, and order 66, and the feeling of coruscanti sunlight.

cody is sure that in  _other_ units, the clone commanders didn’t feel like the force was offering them an ultimatum every single week; either their adventures this time were going to kill  _them,_ or cody would, for the plan that got them into this shit in the first place. 

even in the 501st, with skywalker’s renowned impulsivity - captain rex had his complaints, sure, but  _commander_ appo, now, had seemed to levy enough support that when skywalker wanted to go on  _that type_ of mission, he’d go alone or with cody’s general. 

which was going to give cody an aneurysm. 

right now, he’s tugging his helmet off, wiping the utapauan dust and his own sweat out of his eyes and squinting against the harsh sunlight up at his general - it seems to cast a halo around his auburn hair, which was that  _slight_ state of ruffled up that let cody know he’d almost died. 

( he made a note to criticize kenobi for that later, once they finished the charge. later, they could hide in the back of one of the gunships like cadets spreading gossip, and cody could carefully brush his general’s hair back into place with his fingers, their noses nearly touching, and - he shook himself out of his reverie.  _later._ )

obi-wan took his lightsaber back from cody’s hand with the force, letting it float back into his palm, and cody resisted the urge to shake his head fondly. ( he didn’t tell his general, but he could  _feel it,_ sometimes, when he used the force around him. it felt warm and familiar, like the coruscanti sun, or the slight drawl to kenobi’s accent. )

( he supposed the force was energy, and energy was heat, after all. commander tano had been adrenalin-hot, when you could be on an ice planet but your heart raced so fast your skin was burning to the touch. general skywalker was  _heturam,_ spice burning in your mouth in almost painful amounts. )

kenobi charged up the hill like a knight in a cadet’s storytime book, and cody watched him, faint admiration and affection, always affection, hidden underneath his helmet. 

then his comlink rings, and he, and  _cody_ is erased. 

( true and not-true. he is not-cody enough to aim the gun at his general, but he is still-cody enough to give the coordinates specifically a few seconds late, when obi-wan has already progressed higher, and to put mish, who just sustained a concussion, in the gunner’s seat. )

(  _there seems to be a problem,_ boil tells him, grimacing, hours later.  _we can’t find the body anywhere. the chancellor doesn’t like it._ )

( true and not-true. he is not-cody enough to search for obi-wan’s body like a bloodhound, but he is still-cody enough yet to convince the not-cody part of him that they need to find a  _body,_ not a living person, and he is still-cody enough, walking around, to feel the coruscanti sun beating on his shoulders even down in the utapauan depths. )


End file.
